California School Parent Survey

The California School Parent Survey (CSPS) is a companion tool to the California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS) and the California School Climate Survey (CSCS). Together, they form the California School Climate, Health, and Learning Survey (Cal-SCHLS) System – a comprehensive set of integrated surveys designed to help schools meet the mandates and goals in the Blueprint for the proposed reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) released by the U.S. Department of Education in March 2010.

The CSPS is designed to provide teachers, administrators, and other school staff with information directly from parents that can be used to foster positive learning and teaching environments, parent involvement, and student achievement, health, and well-being, as promoted in the Blueprint for the proposed ESEA reauthorization. The act of asking parents to provide their perceptions of the school is in itself an empowering parent-involvement activity. The survey can also be an effective tool in seeking solutions to help close the racial/ethnic achievement gap. Because this short, 34-item survey parallels much of the content of the CHKS and CSCS, it can be used to compare parent, student, and staff perceptions.

View or download a copy of the Blueprint for Reform: The Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (pdf).

Major Survey Features

The CSPS has many desirable attributes:

• CSPS content is integrated with most of the topics covered in the CHKS and CSCS, allowing a comparison of factors from the perspective of students, staff, and parents.
• The survey is attractively short in length while still addressing core school quality factors.
• The CSPS is completely anonymous; individual parent responses can never be traced back to respondents.
• The survey addresses equity, bias, and cultural responsiveness, and a special report displaying these findings by racial/ethnic groups can be ordered at no additional cost.
• The CSPS can be customized by adding questions of interest to a particular school or district.
• The survey has been translated into 26 languages (only English and Spanish available on-line). [link to language item on FAQ list]
• The survey can be conducted online, on paper, or using a combination of the two strategies.
• Although the CSPS is not provided free-of-charge like the CSCS, survey costs are very low and fall below those of all primary national competitors for most districts.
• School-level reports are optionally available for a low fee.
• Unlimited technical assistance in planning and implementing the CSPS is always included.

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